


What It Is To Come Undone

by joannabelle



Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Angst, Dagor Dagorath, Desperation, Gen, Gore, Hope, Loneliness, M/M, Silverfisting if you squint, Valinor, War of Wrath, War of the Elves and Sauron, War of the Ring, Years of the Lamps, angbang
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-30
Updated: 2015-04-30
Packaged: 2018-03-26 11:29:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3849265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joannabelle/pseuds/joannabelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mairon is unravelled.  </p><p>Set between the ages of The Years of the Lamps all the way until Dagor Dagorath – and follows the slow and painful deterioration of Sauron.</p><p>NOT fluffy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What It Is To Come Undone

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Really, I do not own this world or these characters; I just love them dearly.  
> Rating: Mature.  
> Notes: Now with a side serve of Angbang. (Please do not talk to me about moonflowers)  
> Warnings: There are probably warnings for this one, so for starters – light gore, mentions of suicide, and questionable political affiliations.  
> 

* * *

Mairon’s hair flows in a shimmer of gold upon the wind.  
  
With bright eyes, he tilts up his head and stares – thin green wisps of light wriggle across the vast dark navy blackness of the Valinorean sky.  
  
His fingers are smooth as they slip around the neck of a silver vase, its polished sheen glowing under his palms; and alone he meanders along the foot-trodden path of a lea of blooming white moonflowers.  
  
The faint hum of music shivers in his bones.  
  
Around him Valinor pumps and ebbs with the flow of light – a scorching heat that scalds behind his eyes despite the ethereal darkness that still blankets the earth.  
  
He is whole, a spirit of Illúvatar, one of the special few – Aulë’s most admirable; Aulë’s most _precious_.  
  
Blindly, Mairon rustles past a clearing of Maiar, his mind loose and unfocussed – though he misses not the merry heads that tilt upon his passing.   
  
He smiles at their hail – a wide, bright pulse of his lips.  The smile blisters up the light pink of his cheeks, and tugs into small tucks at the corners of his mouth.  
  
But there is a twinge in his gut, a slight, small aching pain – and the grin never quite reaches his eyes.  
  


* * *

“Power precedes all triumph, Maia. I can give you what you seek.” Melkor’s voice rolls in rivets over the dense heat of the flames about the forge.  Mairon’s ears prickle in anticipation, as he waits for the Vala’s next, puncturing breath.  
  
And there is something in the Vala’s voice that calls to him and promises that it is not a lie.  
  
It is a promise that he can _taste_ – in smooth lines of gold and the twirls of a band.  
  
It is the promise of _absolution_.  
  
And so Mairon takes the blade of which is offered, and he shatters it through his arm – a terrible oath (unspoken) and wrenched upon his bone.  And there he stands and he watches as Melkor’s eyes dance down the weeping glimmers of his skin.  
  


* * *

He misses not the rough scratch of Aulë’s voice.  And as he halts at the foot of a stretching fortress of turrets and broken trees, his boots dig deep into the dirt.  
  
Melkor returns with the Silmarils, and Mairon watches as his Master’s hands begin to crack. And he wonders – silent, oh so utterly, utterly silent (and he makes no move to mention it, but yet the question burns inside his mind) – whether the same fate has been laid forth for him.  
  
A week after his arrival in Angband, he finds wisps of red hair upon the floor.  
  


* * *

“We are close.” Morgoth grinds, the baritone of his voice trembling through the walls.  
  
The earth shakes around them, the drum of feet dragging ever closer.  From somewhere far away and long forgotten, Mairon can feel the humming of a lull flutter along his eardrums.  
  
The dark Vala turns to him, and he clenches as the very air is squashed from his lungs.  He fancies, on retrospect, that it is at this moment where he draws in his last full breath.  
  
“You must go.”  
  
Mairon bites his lip so hard it splits.  
  


* * *

Salted crimson grease tracks a splayed pathway down his face.  Mairon pays it no heed.  
  
Instead, he presses the horse further forward, as twigs dart at him from every angle, stabbing and scraping his skin in his haste as he hurtles through the thicket of pine.  
  
His left arm drags limply in its socket, but he cannot find the presence to care.   
  
He will not break, but _regroup_ – for as long as the oath remains gouged into his bone.  
  
He will not break.  
  


* * *

The guilt splutters across the stones like vomit.  His knees scrape on the gravel and he begs.  
  
Eönwë’s face is twisted. It is a deep, heart-clawing _pity_ that pulls at him, that carves its way down Eönwë’s cheeks in jagged, splintered lines – and in it Mairon recognises the face of an old friend.  
  
“Come _back_ with me, Mairon,” Eönwë pleads, as the wind whispers around Mairon’s ears – enticing.  “I cannot give you what you seek … But he _can_.”  
  
And Mairon sits back on his heels, and he stares to the ground as the salt wet tears begin to crust upon the bruising of his face.  
  
_Just come back with me._  
  
And he wishes to explain it to the Maia – to grab onto Eönwë’s outstretched hand and allow himself to be steered back across the sea, allow himself to be scorned and purged and reviled; and maybe just stitched back together.  To be laced back into a whole.  
  
But his eyes are red. And his hair falls out in strands – in thin webs of glimmering orange that float endlessly upon Manwë’s flowing breaths –  
  
And he can’t.  
  
Eönwë’s hand closes around the air.  
  
And between each of Mairon’s stilted breaths, he can feel the blood pound behind his eyes.  
  


* * *

He pins Tyelpë to the banner, the Elf’s long chestnut hair tickling at his neck.  Mairon winds the rope through and drags it tight.  
  
Somewhere above him, he can smell the faint scent of soured ash.   
  
The drums of his legion thrum behind him in a swallow of clashes and horns.  His head tilts back as with it the world shifts in a jolting rush against his eyes.  
  
He ignores the tremble in his fingers as the rope frays and chafes at small splits in his skin.  
  
He keeps up the act.  
  
Though deep in the base of his stomach seethes the growing tickle of delight.  
  


* * *

He is standing at the ledge; his feet rest upon the cobble.  
  
Below him the army surges. Their black armour shines in a copper stain under the light of Mordor’s molten pits.  
  
Mairon feels the weight of the ring upon his index finger.  
  
And for a moment, he wishes fervently that he could plummet from the edge.  His head would shatter and his neck would snap – a warm, oozing relief spluttered across the uneven stone of the ground below.  
  
He would leave but an imprint of skin and grime up the side of Mordor’s great stone walls – a sullied stain forever left behind.  
  
But as his face twists into a cut of bent skin and wrinkled malice, he is acutely aware that the plummet will do him no good.  
  
So, instead, he raises his golden hand, and hears the roar – rotten and scarred – of the impending, delicious call of battle.  
  


* * *

It falls apart, as he has come to expect – but the wave is _barrelling_.  
  
Frantically, Mairon tries to clamber himself backwards across the slick Númenórean tile. But it is so fast, so utterly fast –  
  
And he feels it hit not as much as he hears the suck of a monstrous breath, as his insides catch alight in a burning flurry – and he is swallowed.   
  
The wave crushes into him like gravel, grinding across every fibre of his skin.  He chokes, mouth gulping in a silent, widened staccato of terror under the torrent of the water – as salt gushes into his eyes, his mouth, his throat.   
  
He cannot breath.  
  


* * *

He shakes; his hands are clenched.  
  
His skin is cracking, and it breaks like the deep splits of the earth after each of Melkor’s furied paroxysms.  
  
It is a new form – and yet; he is tearing out the scorched dregs of his hair.  
  
“Why can't you- … how is this so hard?!”  His voice shakes in its brittleness, and his eyes miss the quiver of disgust that bleeds across the face of the Uruk-Hai who stands, compliantly waiting for an order.  
  
Mairon has no order to give.  
  
His skin is stretched taut and foul against the angles of his back, and each pacing step he steals across the black marble of the dais is shadowed by the protrusion of a bone. Where a gold band once lay, his hand smokes – black and charred and crusted.  
  
The ring is gone – and with it, the last remaining dregs of an oath.  Of a promise – an utterance breathed but so, so long ago.  
  
His hair falls in tangled fistfuls to the floor.  
  


* * *

He tastes it more than feels it when the ring cracks through the hardened crust of lava.  
  
It is but the beating end of a song – the final, lingering note of spice before the plummet.  
  
His fëa trembles, as the gold is engulfed – as it is sucked back into the rivets of magma that Mairon once could taste in every breath of Melkor’s mouth.  
  
And in the barrelling rupture of a volcano, he is utterly and splendidly undone.  
  


* * *

And where there should be no air, not a whisper, not a breath – instead, Mairon sees _gold_.  
  
Something fey sighs around him, a tongue pressed to his ear, and he hears it, quiet, and tastes the ash upon the voice: _It is an illusion._  
  


* * *

Hands scoop across the gold lacquer of his flesh.  
  
Pieces of his hair are threaded like string, and slowly Mairon tastes a distinct copper tang wash over him and materialise into a tongue, a lip, a collar, and a _hand_.  
  
And he can almost clench his fists again, when finally, brightly – he bursts into breath.  
  
“ _Mairon_.”  
  
It is in the sapphire blue eyes that drive down at him, that he need not ask the name.  Melkor’s raven black hair flows in rivers down his collar.  
  
Mairon chokes. And _oh_ it has been so long – it has been _so long_.  
  
And Melkor’s voice rumbles low as the very shifting of the earth.  
  
“Ever the ages have passed, Mairon – and here still we linger inside this song.  Here still we are, caught upon its notes.  Yet I have kept my word to thee.”  Melkor trails white fingers down the curve of his cheek, and Mairon’s lips part but not one word escapes.  
  
“And here thou stand, and thou art complete.”  
  
And then Mairon can feel it –taste it, smell it, _see_ it. How it is curled into every strand of his hair, and brushed across the powder-soft smoothness of his skin.  
  
He is standing in a bed of moonflowers – but it is not as he remembers.  And the lights around them are _blazing_ ; yet no longer are they green.   
  
And he can feel it in the flaming of his eyes, and in the dark and desperate aching of his finger where a ring once sat. Melkor runs a burning ice-cold palm along his nape and his voice rumbles, the twists of their honey ash hair tangling into one.  
  
And: “ _Yes_.” Mairon breathes, his gold eyes wide, as it is _true_.  
  
As all the pain and all the blood (skin shredded against the grating of the stones, and the throbbing gouge inside his bone) is in a breath: forgotten. As around them he registers the golden red crackling of a flame – and Melkor takes his hand.  
  
And he can picture the faces of the Maiar as he at last removes their heads, and as the very crust of the earth splits open and spills into the air.  
  
And there he stands – in a lea of _burning_ moonflowers.  
  
And he smiles.


End file.
